Happy New Year to all the writers
out there!
If last year is any indication of
a popular resolution for writers to make, then there will be a pile of
manuscripts in our email coming soon.
Congratulations to you for
finishing your manuscript. This is an exciting time to move it out your door
and into ours.
We thoroughly vet every ms that meets the submission
criteria found here:
http://www.cactusrainpublishing.com/submissions.html
Spend time working out the perfect industry standard query letter. There is no prize to be first to submit. The prize (publication) is in submitting your best work. You get one shot at making a good first impression. Take your time and show us your best work.
http://www.cactusrainpublishing.com/submissions.html
Spend time working out the perfect industry standard query letter. There is no prize to be first to submit. The prize (publication) is in submitting your best work. You get one shot at making a good first impression. Take your time and show us your best work.
The advice I give you, whether
you submit your manuscript to Cactus Rain Publishing, another publisher or a
literary agent, is to print your ms on paper and read it aloud before you
submit it to anyone. If the voice in your head tells you that you don’t need to
follow that suggestion exactly, then you probably aren’t ready to send your ms
to us.
Printing it on paper will show
you how it will look to us. You should be willing to fund the cost of a ream of
paper when you expect someone else to spend hundreds of times that cost to
publishing your manuscript. If it isn’t worth your investment, them it might
not be worth ours.
Reading it out loud will help you
catch content mistakes where the person walked out of the room, then four
paragraphs later, walked out of the room. Right, there is no mention of
returning to the room after the first exit. Another thing that reading it aloud
will help you catch are the miles long paragraphs. Creative use of a semicolon
doesn’t really impress us. Read about pacing and see how your work improves by
shortening some of those sentences and paragraphs!
That last sentence reminds me to
warn against excessive use of the exclamation point. If everything that the
character says is followed by an exclamation point, they need to get put on
medication and dial it down a bit.
Whether your manuscript is finished or is still
a work in progress, when you submit it, make sure you are submitting your best
work.
When Paul Fenton stops for breakfast in a small town, he gets more than he bargained for in the process.
When two-hundred-year-old human remains are discovered on one of Neptune's moons, Earth's history falls into question.
Emily's husband persuades her to try thalidomide to ease her symptoms as she is unaware of the devastating effects.
Who is the women's shelter bomber? Melissa Ryan suspects that her husband knows.
Further developments with the Wilder family.
A hidden past shakes the O'Donovan family to its core
A swirl of emotion and choice, set in Cape Town, South Africa
Love is a constant, but it comes at a price.
When the road ahead is unclear, sometimes you have to rely on trust.
The struggle between good and evil is ages old. It gets all the more complicated when the good guys aren't all good and the bad guys have redeeming qualities.
Story of a land mothering two races of people – the light-skinned and the dark-skinned.
A gifted Ukrainian ballerina comes into possession of a mysteriously coded address book.
Six passengers' lives change for better or worse after they arrive in Honiton.
Resilience and love in a harsh and unforgiving age
Kathryn's Beach
High Tide
Storm Surge
